The Black Spot
by GoWithTheFlo20
Summary: When Unspeakable Hemlock Potter has her corpse, quite literally, dropped before her with no clues but a broken Time-turner, a lock of hair and a strange black spot on the back of her neck, it's a race against time to solve, and perhaps thwart, her own murder. Heavy Black Family focus. Fem!Harry/Black family (Alphard, Cygnus, Orion, Male!Narcissa, Male!Bellatrix). Time-turner Fic.
1. Chapter 1

**Full Summary: **When Unspeakable Hemlock Potter has her corpse, quite literally, dropped before her with nothing but a broken Time-turner, a lock of hair and a strange black spot on the back of her neck as clues, it's a race against time to solve, and perhaps thwart, her own murder. They say nothing good ever comes for witches who meddle with time, but, then again, she's already dead, isn't she? Heavy Black Family focus. Fem!Harry/Black family (Alphard, Cygnus, Orion, Male!Narcissa, Male!Bellatrix).

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**Note: **This wonderful idea, unfortunately, cannot be classed as my own and I cannot take full credit. I found it as a prompt on reddit and couldn't leave well enough alone. The prompt went as follows: Auror Harry Potter finds himself in a very literal race against time as he seeks to solve, and if possible prevent, the most high-profile murder case that the DMLE has dealt with since he began working there: his own. Basically the story would begin with the (seemingly) dead body of Harry Potter materializing into existence in the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic one day, the only obvious clue as to what happened aside from the indicators of spell damage being the now broken remnants of a Time Turner clutched in his hand, with the living counterpart seeking to avert what everyone assures him is his now inevitable demise. Obviously, I've changed it up a little, but I hope you all enjoy it anyway!

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**Prologue: **

**A Tuesday Morning.**

_Hemlock Potter's P.O.V_

It was a Tuesday morning in the bonny days of spring that Unspeakable Hemlock Potter had her most notorious case, quite literally, slammed before her. At twenty, one of the youngest Unspeakables ever recorded in wizarding history, Hemlock had been doing just fine for herself. Really, she had. More than fine, in fact.

She had a steady job, which she loved. She had a home, although Grimmauld place could never quite be classed as… Welcoming, it suited the redheads tastes just dandy. She had friends, a social life, and, of course, still visited the Weasley's every Sunday for lunch. Sure, she was a little, only a little, lonely. Perhaps, some nights, she felt a bit aimless. Restless. Helpless. A bit too full of these 'less's in truth. Yet, that was normal, surely? It _was._

Life was good.

Life was great.

Then she went into work on a Tuesday morning.

It had started like every other Tuesday. Boring. Drab. She awoke, went for a jog, got home at half six in the morning, grabbed a shower, spotted the clock ticking away in the kitchen, realised she was now ten minutes late for work, apparated outside the Ministry of Magic with a piece of toast dangling out her mouth, and dashed in side. Holstein was going to chew her out. Again.

She only made it halfway across the atrium, towards the floo that would take her to the top floor, when it happened. It was not everyday a body, broken, bleeding, bruised, came materializing out of the stodgy air of the Ministry of Magic atrium to drop at your feet.

It was even less expected that the body would be your own.

There was something unseemly about seeing yourself staring back from vacant, dead eyes.

It was a Tuesday morning that Unspeakable Hemlock Potter had her own corpse dropped unceremoniously before her, a shattered time-turner dangling from snapped neck, the slick sense of dark magic still lingering on the swiftly cooling skin, and, there, right there, tight in a frozen fist, a lock of black hair ensnared between twisted, cracked fingers, ripped from someone's scalp.

She thought it might be, just might be, acceptable to say she had not been alright since.

She doubted she ever would be again.

The proof was there, right in front of her shiny, dragon hide boots.

She was dead.

Bloody hell.

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_Thoughts?_

I know the prologue is extremely short, but I wanted to post a little taster to see if anybody bites before I really get going lmao. Either way, I hope you liked this little hint and are looking forward to what is to come! If you have a spare moment or two, make sure to review, and hopefully, I will see you guys again soon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Fancast: **Hemlock: Margarita masliakova. Male!Bellatrix (Belenos): Ben Barnes. Male!Narcissa (Narcissus): Emil Andersson. Alphard: Hugh Dancy. Cygnus: Kit Harrington. Orion: Michiel Huisman.

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**Chapter One:**

**Dead in the Dark.**

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_Hemlock Potter's P.O.V_

Hemlock Potter needed a cigarette. To tell the truth, she needed ten. Ten cigarettes and five shots of firewhiskey. Ten cigarettes, five shots of firewhiskey, a long, hot soak in a clawfoot tub, and an open bottle of Chateauneuf Du Pape. Conceivably, what Hemlock _really _needed was some sound sleep.

Yet, every time she closed her eyes, she saw herself there.

Static.

Gone.

She hated herself for it. This disquiet that descended upon her gradually but clearly. Truly, she did. She was a Gryffindor. Daughter of _the_ James Potter and Lily Evans. Apprehension and hesitation were not in her blood. Death was nothing new to Hemlock. Death was an old friend. Merlin, she had died before. It was nothing new. It _shouldn't _be nothing new. Nevertheless, she had never _seen _herself dead before. That _was _new.

That was wholly unpleasant.

It had been three days since she had fallen at her own feet, and she was sure, somewhere, prowling amongst those muddy lines, there was a joke to be had. She couldn't find it. She couldn't find sleep either. Nor appetite. Only this abrupt and irrefutably wavering that was, completely, so unlike herself.

Perhaps that was why she stalled underneath the shrinking light of the mortuary in the bowels of Saint Mungo's, caught between the door and hall. If she stayed at the cusp, far enough away, she could pretend the body laid before them, stretched across an unforgiving slab of marble, nothing but a white sheet tucked to chest, was simply sleeping.

Sleeping and so very fucking grey.

"What can you tell me?"

Her voice came out gruffer than she expected. Craggy like unpolished granite. It held a lethargy to it. Apathy dressed in rough spun wool. _Numb. _She sounded numb. She felt it too. Hollow. She had since the first diagnostics had been ran on the corpse and Polyjuice, transfiguration and doppelgängers had been irrefutably cleared from the equation.

That was, undeniably, her.

This is where she ended.

Naked and broken.

Alone.

Dead in the dark.

Wasn't that a kick in the teeth?

The healer tasked with examining the corpse shot a timid, hazel gaze in her general direction. He didn't look directly at her. The closest he got was a spot by her earlobe. He couldn't bring himself to, Hemlock thought. He couldn't look a walking-talking dead woman in the eye. Oddly, she found that a little funny.

"Are you sure you should be-"

She swiftly cut him off.

"Yes."

Who else was going to stop this cluster fuck from happening?

No one.

Hemlock, as always, was deserted in this debacle.

The Ministry of Magic had been adamant on the matter. With the shattered remains of the time-turner embedded around her corpse's neck, even the most audacious of Ministry officials had taken a step back from interfering. It's already done, they said. What will be, will be, they told her. Nothing can be done, bad things happen to those who meddle with time dear girl, they prattled. The lone blessing in this Morgana forsaken mess was they had managed to keep the news out of the press. For now.

Fuck 'em.

Fuck 'em and their looks of pity.

These were the same people who had listen to a half-formed prophecy and decided to leave the future of the wizarding world swaying in the hands of an abused eleven-year-old. Even though Hemlock had long since, she had previously thought, left behind that pip of bitterness behind at their actions, or lack thereof, she had quickly learned not to rely too much on anyone else but herself.

The wizarding world had a nasty habit of putting too much faith in destiny and fate. Hemlock liked to spit in their faces just for fun. This would be no different. She would prove them wrong again. She _would._ So, here she was, in the sombre cellar of Saint Mungo's, investigating her own death.

Thankfully, she had help.

Hemlock still had pull in the Ministry. More pull than most were comfortable with. Herself included. You didn't save the wizarding world without earning a few favours to cash in, and a handful of strings to pull. The Minister of Magic Shacklebolt's continuing support of her didn't hurt, either. It wasn't over yet, despite what the body before her declared. If Hemlock had one defining feature at all, it was her uncanny knack for escaping certain death. She was _always_ most dangerous with her back against the wall.

Something her would be assassin was sure to quickly learn.

The healer, a Pucey if she weren't mistaken by his flaxen hair, cut a brief peek over her other shoulder, to the Auror at her side. Ron Weasley nodded sternly. At the urging, Pucey swallowed deeply, swishing his wand along the scope of the corpse between them.

"Approximate age of death would be a few months after the age of twenty-one. Four, if I had to be precise."

Hemlock's shoulders stiffened as her own gaze dropped to the washed and groomed face of the corpse. Peaceful. I-… She-… They looked peaceful. Happy enough. There was a twist to her own-… The bodies lips. A tiny little up quirk. A small smile. Delighted and tranquil.

"So, I have eight months before…"

_Get your head on straight. _

Hemlock resolutely dragged her eye away from the body and refused to let it slither back. However, she did steel herself enough to take a gander into the room, step by clacking step. _Pretend it's someone else. Pretend it's any other case. _What _did_ Hemlock know? Notably, there was no sign of shock frozen on the face. Not a whiff of surprise. Either, she-… The corpse had not known it had been coming, and therefore had no time to register what was about to happen, or, as Hemlock believed, the corpse had _known_ the murderer. They had been happy to see them.

That _hurt. _

"What else, Pucey?"

The healer coughed into a tight fist, the glow from his wand glistening to a burnt copper as he hovered it over the covered feet of the corpse and sluggishly weaved it upwards.

"A partially healed break in the right ankle. Heml-… The victim must have attained the injury a few months before her death by the way the bone has settled. There's no sign the victim used skele-gro, as the fracture is still present. My best guess is she didn't know it was broken and likely believed it was a severe sprain."

So, sometime soon, Hemlock was going to break her ankle. Possibly, if she managed to avoid that, or even if she didn't, if Hemlock _used _skele-gro, she could divert-… Fuck. What a bloody mess. No. Leave plan-ankle last. First, see if she could find out who the hell murdered her and, if luck was on her side, perhaps prevent it.

Killer first, chugging bottles of skele-gro in a windowless, padded cell next.

"There's no sign of poison or potion in the stomach contents or blood. The body is inundated with dark magic. However, as far as calling it dark magic, that is all I can tell you. Whatever the victim was hit with, charm, spell or hex, I've never seen anything like it before. It's _strong_. And it comes from this."

The healer gently reached around the corpse, brushed away a long lock of spiralling red hair, bared the frail bent neck, and twisted the face away. The back of the neck was bare save for a single, small, thumb sized mark. A perfect black circle. For the first time since the pair had entered the dark crypts, and both had caught sight of the body presented before them, Ron spoke up from her side.

His voice was raspy too.

It couldn't be easy seeing your best friend dead.

Twice.

"Could it be a disease of some kind? A strain of dragon-pox?"

The healer shook his head, softly laying the head back to rest on the slab.

"That's what I first thought, but it doesn't match. Dragon-pox leaves circular scales along the body. However, that's scales, not _flesh, _which this mark is. There's no record of anything like this before. At least, none I've read about or seen."

Hemlock chewed her lip until there was a startling pop and she could taste copper.

_Pretend it isn't you. Pretend it's any other case. _

"Could it be the point of contact from whatever spell was used?"

The mark was circular. If the wand was close enough, directly at the back of the victims neck, the blast from the spell would be concentrated enough, feasibly, to form such a spot. If so, that meant the perpetrator had snuck up on the victim, right to their back, perhaps they had taken their time, slowly rose their wand and-

Something wasn't adding up. A whole lot of somethings. It had been four years since the war. Four entire, beautiful too fucking short years. Why attack her eight months from now? Why not eight months ago? A year? Three?

Why give her bloody hope that she could_ finally _have a full, happy life, only to snatch it from her?

The healer shrugged.

Hemlock thought that was what life itself had done to her all her existence.

Shrug.

Fuck it too while she was at it.

Fuck it _all_.

She wasn't numb.

She was _angry. _

"Possibly. But it would have to be a strong spell to leave such a mark. Stronger than most witches and wizards can cast."

Then something sparked in his hazel eyes. Something bright and hot. Excitement.

"But I can tell you this."

Bending over, Pucey used the tip of his wand to slip through the gilded chain around the victims neck, lifting the twisted heap of jagged glass, gold and onyx and crimson. Red… Red from her-… The Victims blood.

Her stomach churned.

"This is an unregistered Time-turner. Old. Fanciful. Infinitely more intricate than any I have ever seen. Most time-turners are designed with a limited functionality. For safety, obviously. Three months travel, back and forward, tops. This, by the amount of hourglass's, has _years, _not months. Decades perhaps. Completely outside Ministry decree. It must have been made in secret. And this particular shard is most fascinating…"

Stretching down with a gloved hand, he took the crooked scrap of metal and flipped it over. The gold glinted under the low light. Hemlock edged forward, stooped down, eyed it wearily. It was inscribed. Her mouth fluttered along with the words.

"Toujours Pur. It's a Black family heirloom."

The healer grinned at her, bouncy in his step as he dashed around the morgue slab, right around with a hop, and came to a slewing stop at her side. He reeked of anaesthetic potions and the musky aftershave house elves offered you in the Ministry bathrooms. From the breast pocket of his pristine white robe, he produced a tiny folded parchment envelope and handed it to her.

The red wax seal on the back told her it was supposed to be in the evidence locker at the Ministry.

Slytherins and their sticky-sly fingers.

Limply, Hemlock took it. It was light. Feathery. She brushed the unsealed tab open, squeezed the sides till the mouth of it popped wide. A lock of black hair stared, almost mockingly, back at her from the bottom.

"I also managed to trace the lock of hair. It hasn't been Polyjuiced or transfigured. That's its original state. I can't give an exact name, we don't keep blood dossiers on families, for reasons of blood magic and discretion, but I can tell you which family it belongs to."

The silence drifted as Pucey's gaze scurried between a scowling Ron and a cocked brow Hemlock. When neither one of them tried to guess, his smile faltered and fell to the tiled floor with a tremble.

"Without a shadow of a doubt, that hair came from a Black."

Ron was the first to react with a hearty scoff.

"The Blacks are dead. _Dead._"

Nevertheless, Hemlock's mind began to turn, spinning, swirling, as she stared down hard at that little lock of hair. As far as she knew, there were currently four Blacks in existence. Only four. One of them wasn't really a Black, having taken more after his mother than his father, and the other, well, the other just so happened to be her own bloody godson.

"Could it have come from Teddy Lupin? Or Lord Draco Black?"

Draco may be blonde, but he had taken the Lord Black title officially from his father after the family had been put under house arrest after the war. With the House title under his belt, any tracking spells used would ring up 'Black', despite his prominent Malfoy blood. Still, why would Draco Black kill her? Sure, they had a sordid history.

If you counted Hemlock nearly murdering him in the boys bathroom that one time.

Yet, that was years ago. Draco was not known for his patience. Especially in matters of revenge. Neither did Hemlock think he was smart enough, though he was by no means unintelligent, to lure her into a false sense of security before he acted. That was more his mother's modus operandi.

Since the end of the war, they had been cordial. Hardly friends. Hemlock didn't think either one of them could stomach that, but affable in a remote way. Draco worked a floor below her in the Ministry, down in the department of wizarding legislature. They passed each other sometimes, heading in and out of work. They didn't speak, but they did nod. Draco had even once managed a tentative smile at her. Given, it was the Yule holiday, so perhaps the festive fever had muddled his head, but he _had _smiled.

_Not Draco Black. He may be a ferrety prick, but he isn't a coldblooded killer. _

_You saw how he cried when he was forced to kill Dumbledore. _

_Not him. _

Perhaps his parents? Narcissus or Lucina Black? Perhaps not Lucina, though she was married into the Black family, her trackers would still show Malfoy. Blood was stronger than wedding vows. Hemlock had been at their trials. She had sat in the Potters seat amongst the Wizengamot. She had spoken _for _them.

Passionately.

Against everyone's utter bafflement and shock, that is. It was her testimony that had gotten them, sans Lucina, out from under the sentence of Azkaban. Lucina had gotten herself off, as she had before, on a bloody technicality_. _Still, Hemlock had been… Pleased Narcissus had escaped Azkaban. If only to repay the debt she owed him.

In the end, Narcissus Black had saved her life. Standing tall, barefaced lying, he had told Tom Riddle she was dead. He had given her a chance. Neither had Narcissus outrightly supported Tom, unlike his wife, Lucina Black nee Malfoy, and had always, without fail, been… Kind to her. Reserved. Detached. Yet coldly kind.

Draco had been just like her.

A child trying to survive.

She had not seen Narcissus since the Death Eater trails four years ago. Since she had looked down into the Wizengamot pulpit, right down to Narcissus's bent, blonde head, snagged his silvery stare with her emerald, and, as any Gryffindor was prone to do in all their glorious brash and boldness, professed to the Wizengamot that, if not for that man there, they would have lost the war.

The last she had heard, Narcissus had moved in with his sister, after a rather nasty divorce between him and Lucina three years ago, in which his son, Draco, had followed him, having always been a daddy's boy. On the other hand, with Lucina for a mother… Well, Hemlock didn't blame her old classmate.

Even so, despite the fact that Hemlock visited Andromeda often, she never ran into Narcissus. The last they had seen each other, four years ago, they had nodded politely over the bustle of the Ministry crowd, and that was that.

Surely he wouldn't try to off her?

Narcissus had a chance in that field with a snarling Tom at his back.

He would have been gifted handsomely for telling Tom the truth.

He hadn't then, certainly he wouldn't now?

Then again… Why hadn't he? Why did he put his neck on the line for her? Narcissus may have never publicly supported Tom, but neither had he advocated the Order or denounced the Death Eaters. Their side had been winning. There was no doubt in that. Tom had come so close to victory, right until Narcissus Black and lied to him… Then why-

That lock of hair came from her assailant. It had to. You didn't rip out a chunk of hair from anyone else but somebody attacking you. Then why was her corpse fucking smiling? Why was there a broken Black time-turner dangling between her breasts? What the hell was that mark on her neck?

What the fuck was going on?

No. Not Narcissus. Not Draco. They were blonde. The hair was black.

That left two more.

It wasn't Andromeda. Her hair was straight and chestnut, not curly and onyx. Teddy? Couldn't be. The boy was barely five. Yet… Yet. Hemlock may have, will be, with her godson when she, if she-… Teddy was a Metamorphmagus. He could change at will. He could turn his hair black and curly if he wished, though he preferred spikey blue at the moment. Hemlock might have tried protecting him in an attack. Perhaps she had accidentally ripped a lock of his hair out while attempting to shield him.

If so, her godson was in danger and-

"No. I found no enchanted markers for Malfoy or Lupin within the magical signature of the hair. It's Black. Pure Black."

And a swift sharp drop back to square one.

Nothing.

Just more questions and riddles. Mysteries she had no hope of answering herself. _Get your head on fucking straight! _Yes. Think. She was an Unspeakable. A pretty damned good one too, if she were to brag. There was no crime-scene currently. That would come in eight months. Eight months too late to change.

The corpse had given her one lead, through time-turner and hair.

The Most Noble and Ancient House of Black.

It was time to start digging her way out of her own grave.

Straightening out with a sharp tug to the hem of her blouse, pocketing the envelope in her slacks, Hemlock grinned pleasantly at Pucey.

It felt too tight.

"Thank you for your help Healer Pucey. It's much appreciated."

The smile he returned her was blinding.

"You saved my sister from Greyback, Potter. While everyone ran the other way, you turned back and saved my sister. This was the least I could do. If you need further assistance, do not hesitate to owl me."

Eternally uncomfortable when people brought up the Battle of Hogwarts, even four years later, all Hemlock could muster herself to do was give a jolting, harsh bow of her head and wheeled around, strolling out the crypt door. Ron was hot on her trail, and hotter on her strategy.

"Wherever you're plotting on scouting, you shouldn't go alone. I should be with you to make sure-"

"You heard Pucey. I have eight months before my big Death-Day. I'm fine, Ron. Honestly. I appreciate you coming here so late, but I don't need to be watched. You should head home to Hermione. You know how cranky she gets when she doesn't have her strawberry ice-cream at three in the morning."

A warm hand resting on her shoulder made her stutter in her stride. Hemlock was quick enough to right her pace. Quicker still to ignore the heavy, squeezing hand. Desperate.

"Do you know how _cranky_ she will be if I let the godmother of our unborn child die before the babe can meet them? She'll have my head, Lock, and I like my head perfectly where it is, cheers."

This time she did stop. She stopped and faced her oldest, best friend. She wished she hadn't. His ginger hair was chaotic. More so than usual. Sticking and jolting from shaky hands being run through in frustration. His freckled face was pallid. Drawn. There was a sheen over his vibrant periwinkle eyes. A doleful lustre.

Desperate.

As his hand on her shoulder was desperate.

_Stay with me. Here. Now. Passed eight months. _

_Stay with me. _

_Don't go. _

_Please. _

Hemlock's hand skulked up to her shoulder, fingers snaking through fingers, grasping. Clutching. Similarly as desperate. That was the plan. To stay. However, she had to face the reality that she might… This could… Whatever road she was on presently, there was a very real chance it ended in the atrium of the Ministry of Magic with her dead and gone. By acting to prevent her death, she could easily be causing it. She couldn't afford, never in a million years, to have either Ron or Hermione beside her there.

She wouldn't be able to live with herself.

Even for the eight months she had left.

No.

She was going to live. She was going to survive. Hemlock Potter had not stolen the philosophers stone, breached the Chamber of secrets, sprung a prisoner out of jail, formed an army and won a war, sacrificed herself, to die in the Ministry of fucking Magic on a bloody Tuesday.

This was not how she left the great game.

"I promise, Ron, I'll be fine. Head home, get some sleep, rest beside Hermione and… Just go home and be a family. I'll be heading back soon anyway."

With one last reassuring squeeze, Hemlock tugged Ron's hand off her shoulder and dropped it beside them. As she began to march away, Ron barked at her retreating back.

"At least tell me where you're going!"

Where was she going? The one place Hemlock could go. The one place all signs were pointing to. The one place that, if it was a Black that was to be her killer, was, perhaps, the very worst place she could go.

"Tonks Manor. The last Blacks have some explaining to do."

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_Woo or Boo? _

**Next Chapter: **Narcissus and Adromeda Black enter stage right, and Hemlock gets a whiff of something fishy...

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**Chapter Notes: **Trying to find a male name was quite easy for Narcissa, as Narcissus is its male counterpart. Bellatrix, however, has no male equivalent. I tried to stick as close to the original name as possible, and looked up some star names. Belenos appeared, a star in the constellation of Pisces, and I thought it quite fit. It's also the name of an old Celtic sun god, and that's the kind of ego the Blacks have lol.

I also wanted to make the writing a bit choppy this chapter, as it reflects Hemlock's state of mind currently. She's frantic, jumping around the place, unsettled, and I wanted that to come through the writing itself. I know that may annoy some readers, but the writing does clear up next chapter as Hemlock begins to focus not on her death, but solving a crime.

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**Thank you** for the follows and favourites. I hope all you enjoyed this chapter. If you'd like to see more, make sure to drop a little review for the muses. Hopefully, I will see you guys again soon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Two:**

**Like Sand in a Storm**

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_Hemlock Potter's P.O.V_

Tonks Manor was not nearly as old as visitors first assumed. Red bricked and erected in the late seventies, the walls swelled from the cropped soft clay lawn with more windows and chimneys than a careless glance could count. It lay on edge of Prairie Hill, as if the ground itself had ruptured and spewed it out, making no attempt at camouflage in the otherwise idyllic countryside.

Everything about it, inside and out, said it was affluent. Of course it did. The house was the brainchild of Andromeda Tonks, built when she was newly married for her expanding family and ballooning dreams, and took its shade in her ego. Overly large and flamboyant to the point of intimidation.

Much like the woman who built it.

The only hint of her late husband's, Ted Tonks, influence was the puzzling flow of gardens wrapping around the red-bricked-beast, which echoed the baffling layout of halls and rooms inside. Ted Tonks had adored mazes, and his wife had made sure to build their home with that love in mind. The yearly renovations Andromeda undertook only seemed to muddy the place up even more.

Always shifting.

Like sand in a storm.

One wrong step up the spiralling carriageway, and you could get lost for hours before you even reached the front door.

Hemlock knew _that_ personally.

Raising her hand, she knocked on the wide, twin doors in a spell of three. There was no need. Andromeda had felt her apparate through the wards. Knocking was a muggle habit Hemlock had never been able to shake, and doubted she ever would. The door swung open before Hemlock had even lowered her hand.

And there she was. The woman Hemlock would never admit she was likewise fond of as she was terrified. Tall, beautiful, and a complete menace with a wand, Andromeda Tonks was, seemingly, everything a pureblood should be. Yet, she was everything decidedly _not_, and, Merlin, Hemlock loved her all the more for it.

Nevertheless, the dimpled grin Andromeda donned as she opened the door quickly crumbled as soon as she spotted who stood on the other side, voice trailing off to a pathetic pattering halt.

"Be-… Hemlock… What-… I wasn't expecting to see you today."

Hemlock frowned. Andromeda was typically happy to see her, as usual with those who had their hands full with a rowdy child and could always use the extra set of eyes. Even more so when the younger witched dropped round for a surprise visit. Yet, the quick dart of Andromeda's gaze, somewhere behind Hemlock's shoulder, the unexpected flaw of her waning smile, had Hemlock's own stare veering behind her to see what had snagged the witches attention.

A keen clap of Andromeda's hands snapped Hemlock's head back around before she could catch a glimpse.

"Where are my manners! Come in, come in. You know not to knock by now. How many times do I have to tell you to use the floo. The door is for strangers, the fireplace is for family."

The grin was back. Bright. Brilliant. Beautiful. _Forced._ The older woman shuffled aside, away from the door, sweeping a long arm out to shepherd her in like a lost little lamb. Hemlock took a tentative step into the foyer and, subtly, peeked behind her outside.

_Nothing. _

Just the empty gardens and a few weather-worn sculptures.

Morgana, she was getting paranoid.

This was Andromeda.

_Andromeda. _

Andromeda with a forced smile…

The door closed behind her with a click. Although Hemlock smiled back, easy-breezy and full of teeth, as she trailed Andromeda through the winding, seemingly never-ending halls to the tea parlour, as she had done a thousand times before, she couldn't stop the twitch of her wrist, feeling the strap of her wand holster on her forearm tighten comfortingly.

She was armed.

She was fine.

The was Andromeda for Merlin's sake.

"I wasn't expecting to visit today."

As much as Hemlock had wanted, after that disconcerting screening of her own body in the cellar of Saint Mungo's, to dash to the Tonks residence, perhaps snatch up all the Blacks she could find loitering in shady nooks, and shake them about until an answer rattled loose from their secretive Slytherin minds like salt-shakers, she had held off a few hours.

Teddy would be sleeping.

If, and that really was a stretched if, things, for whatever reason, went south, she didn't want her godson anywhere near the blast radius.

Because if she was going down, she was damn well making sure she took a few bastards with her.

"You just missed Teddy. He's gone to spend the morning at nursery. I can fix you a cup of tea, and you can-"

_She's nattering. _

_Andy never babbles. _

Andromeda was a woman of formidable bluntness. If a sentence could be whittled to a single word, Andromeda would find a way to shorten it further. It was never done to antagonize. It was just the way she was, as Hemlock was perpetually wry. So, why was she blathering now?

_She's buying herself time. Look at her hand, stuck on the brass door handle. She's waiting. Waiting for what? Or was that what a who?_

No.

This was _Andromeda_.

_Andromeda who could, possibly, know my killer._

Fuck.

"I'm here on official business, Andy."

Andromeda's hand stiffened on the door handle. Minuscule. A tremble in her fourth knuckle. Nevertheless, Hemlock spied it. Andromeda was one of the few people who knew what Hemlock was, rather than the flimsy covert designation of Auror. _An Unspeakable_. Those who could never tell of what they did or said or plotted.

It was all in the title really. As an Unspeakable, it was safer for those around you to think you to be an ordinary Auror. For you _and _them. A small white lie that, obviously, was neither small or very light. Yet, Andromeda had survived two wars that had seen the death of her friends, family, husband and child.

There was a reason she still lived. Andromeda Tonks was fearsome and extraordinary in her own right. Nothing got passed her hawk-eyed gaze. She never outrightly asked Hemlock, and Hemlock had never brought it up or denied it. Neither had to. It was there and neither acknowledged it. A big fat, dark mole on the otherwise unblemished face of their friendship.

Until now, it had all been safer that way.

Until _now. _

"Nothing too grave, I hope?"

Andromeda queried cheerily as she decisively opened the door and lead them into the room. It was a handsome room, indeed, and utterly changed since the last time Hemlock had seen it only five days ago. Andromeda had gone for a Roman feel this time, imperial and stately. Beautiful mosaics of wreaths and fawns decorated the walls in polished panels, and gilt furniture sprawled amongst the smooth floor. It was big, but not too empty, and belonged to human life, not for show.

Relaxing amid all this royalty and regality, lounging back on a velvet draped chesterfield was none other than Lord Narcissus Black himself. Each and every time Hemlock saw him, she always thought of starlight. Gleaming and gorgeous, but so very far away.

Desolate.

He was dressed casually that day. In a dove grey cashmere sweater and a pair of pressed slacks. His long blonde hair, more gold than Malfoy silver, was wrangled back, looped in a lazy bun by his wand. His arms slung over the back of the chesterfield; one leg flung over the other, polished Italian leather shoes glistening.

_Strange. _

His left foot, that shiny, shiny expensive shoe, was covered in a thin layer of mud.

Right then and there, Hemlock knew something was terribly wrong.

"What is _he _doing here?"

Andromeda lingered in her journey to her brother's side, likely aiming to take the seat next to him.

"He lives here, Hemlock. You know that."

Hemlock stood rooted by the door, even as Andromeda's smile dimmed with a perplexed frown, dawdling between her brother and a scowling Hemlock. Bouncing. Caught.

_Stuck_.

"In the four years I've been visiting, not one, not _one_ bloody time, has Black been here. Now… _Now_ he's here?"

Naturally, Hemlock had been planning on questioning Lord Black. Yet, it was funny. Hilarious in a very bad way. Four years Hemlock had been coming, at least three times a week, to Tonks Manor. At the minimum, Hemlock Potter had stepped into this grand house six hundred and twenty-four times. Six hundred- and twenty-four-times Hemlock had not saw hide nor hair of Lord Black.

Not so much as a shadow on the wall passing by.

And here he was, in all his cool charming glory, just four days after the appearance of her own bloody corpse, drinking fucking tea.

Coincidence meant only a connection that was not seen.

Roots meet underground.

"Hemlock-"

Andromeda was cut off as Narcissus stood from his seat in a sweeping roll.

Hemlock had forgotten how tall he was.

"I can leave if you wish. I do not want my presence to cause any discomfort-"

She had also forgotten how hard it was to read him. Every word so meticulously chosen. Enunciated carefully, with all the rhythm of a canny fox. His face never gave anything away. Diamonds and starlight. Light mirrored back.

Silver clashed against emerald.

Hemlock's nostrils flared as she took a steady, heady breath in. She held it for a while. Let its weight anchor her. Calm her. _I'm still breathing. Feel that. I'm still alive. _On the exhale, she gave a stunning smile.

There was a reason the sorting hat had to fight so hard to put her in Gryffindor.

If the Slytherins before her wanted to play chess, she would play, and as all good chess players knew, you moved in silence, and only spoke truly when it was time to say checkmate.

"No, no. Of course not. I'm sorry. I've just got out a three-shift rota at work and my head is all over the place. I wasn't expecting to see you here, is all. It's for the best, really. I came to speak to both of you, so you've saved me a few hours run-around."

For a long while, silence wafted about them. Drifting. Bitter. Like winter winds. Thankfully, Narcissus was the first to move, sitting back down in the seat he had vacated.

"It's best if you sit down too, Andy. This might take a while."

Hemlock advised. Gently, Andromeda joined her brother on the sofa, rigid. Tearing away from the door, Hemlock chose the chair opposite the pair, across the table containing the tea tray. The morning light pilfering through the large bay windows was at her back, lighting their faces and, with a bit of luck, masking her own just enough to offer some shelter from Narcissus's clever eye.

_Good. _

"Hemlock, what's wrong?"

Andromeda asked. Hemlock looked at her. Really looked. She spotted the streak of grey at her temple. A fine hardly-there line around the lips. Lips that were just a smidgen less full than they had once been. Age creeping in from the corners of the page. There was a beauty there, in that age, between lines and grey and tapering, Hemlock thought. The beauty of surviving. The beauty of living a life well lived.

A beauty Hemlock would never get for herself if she did not solve this murder.

_Her _murder.

Her gaze fell to the table. To the steaming pot of tea, ready to be poured.

_Ready to be poured. _

There were three cups._ Three. _All of them had been partially drunk from. Andromeda had not known she was coming.

Teddy was at nursery.

Draco was at the Ministry.

Hemlock's hand shrewdly brushed the leather seat she sat upon. It was _warm. _

"I don't suppose Draco is here? It would be so much easier if I had all three of you to talk to at once."

Andromeda shook her head.

"Sorry, dear. Draco left for work a few hours back. It's just us three."

_Lie. _

Andromeda was lying to her.

Three cups, a warm seat, and… Yes. The door across the room, the side door that lead to the conservatory, was open. The mud on Narcissus shoe could have been from his entrance from the back gardens, through the conservatory, but she doubted it. Someone, very recently, had sat in this seat she was currently sitting in, and was drinking bloody tea with the Blacks.

A person Andromeda was lying to her about.

Andromeda had_ stalled_ by the door. She had been _waiting_. Someone had left this room in a rush, as Andromeda had kept her at bay at the door. Someone, Hemlock was guessing, Narcissus had led out through the conservatory, and accidentally gotten his left foot muddy by his lone step outside before he came scurrying back.

She should leave.

She should leave _now. _

No. _Calm._ Hemlock's magical signature was added to the wards. She could apparate as she pleased here. The first sign of someone, anyone, reaching for their wands, and she would go then. _Only _then. They were hiding _something. _Something they, certainly, didn't want Hemlock to see or know.

_Carry on. Don't let them know you know. Don't give them a chance to guard their flanks. _

"Never mind. I'll pop in after work. Right, down to business then. Do either of you have any Black cousins that are not registered in the official pureblood codex in the Ministry?"

Anew, Andromeda was the one to take the brunt of the question.

"No, of course not. You've seen the Lineage Tree at Grimmauld Place. All Black births are…"

She broke off and gave a hearty sneer.

"_Meticulously_ recorded."

Hemlock nodded. She had spent the first night after-… _After, _searching that very tree long into the wee hours of the night. All names, apart from those before her, Draco and Teddy, had been scrawled in red.

_Dead. _

Yet, Hemlock could not check the ones that had been blasted off the tree, their names nothing but gaping scorch marks. No portrait, no name, no date of birth, just a big, bold, burn.

One of them could be her killer.

"Is there a possible chance that there was a… Dalliance with your father, uncles or cousins? Any sort of affair that could have produced offspring that, for whatever reason, wasn't recorded? Or anyone that got blasted off the Tree that could still be alive today?"

Walburga Black had a penchant for blasting off faces from the Tree. If Orion, at any point, had a liaison that ended in a child, Hemlock could see Walburga flinging hexes left, right and bloody centre. The same for Cygnus and Druella.

Walburga wouldn't have liked anybody _sullying_ the house of Black with a bastard of all things.

Particularly if that affair included a muggle or muggleborn.

It was Hemlock's top theory currently. In truth, her only working theory. But, of course, that would all be too simple. That would mean she had _any_ type of luck at all. In all his wily poise, Narcissus shot her down mercilessly.

"None that we are aware of, and our knowledge is a moot point. The Tree is old blood magic. It casts itself into existence, outside our personal wants or wishes. If a Black is born, so shall they be on the Tree. If they are not on the Tree, they do not exist. As for the likelihood of those defaced off the Tree being alive, in the last century, apart from my sister here, there have only ever been another two. Alphard, our uncle, and Sirius. I can assure you; both have been buried in the Black crypts. If I may, Lady Potter, what is this truly about? I doubt the Ministry is interested in our genealogy."

Hemlock's hand crept up to her ear, fiddling with her earring, spinning the pearl around. A nervous tick she had when her mind carried her away. Most of the time, she didn't even know she was doing it. Narcissus's gaze dropped to her earlobe, to the twirling little pearl, and, she swore, she thought she saw a ghost of a smile flitter passed his lips, as soft as the flap of a butterflies wing.

Indulgent.

_Reminiscing._

Hemlock's hand dropped back into her lap.

"Four days ago, a body appeared in the atrium of the Ministry of Magic. The cause of death is currently unknown, though extensive spell damage was present. A lock of hair was found on the corpse. Hair that traced back to the Black family."

Andromeda was quick to refute the implication.

"Me and Narcissus have both been within this house for the whole week readying for spring solstice celebrations. You are free to ask the neighbours if you wish. Check our wands. We were nowhere near-"

"We don't believe it was either of you. The hair was black in colour. Curly. I need to know if there is any, and I mean _any,_ possible chance that there might be a Black, illegitimate or not, running about."

_One, that for whatever reason, would like to see me dead. _

Narcissus leant forward, bracing elbow on knee. Tilting closer.

Too close.

"The chances of such are slim to none, Lady Potter. However, I can look into my library and see if there is not a distant side branch of the-"

"There's no time for that."

_No time. _

Funny, that. After the war Hemlock had thought, for the first time in her life, that she had all the time in the world.

Turns out that time was always borrowed.

There was so much she wanted to do. She wanted to finish building that orphanage. She wanted to, in a few years time, apply for the Defence against the Dark Arts teaching post at Hogwarts. She wanted to meet her unborn godchild, who she was sure was going to be as lovingly loyal as Ron and as outrageously smart as Hermione. She wanted to stand on platform nine and three-quarters, teary-eyed, waving Teddy off to his first year.

She wanted grey hair and laugh lines.

She wanted to get plump and fat in her old age.

Perhaps a bit snarky too, as most older people were.

Most of all, she wanted a family all her own. Children who would drive her up the wall. She wanted to hear Grimmauld Place noisy with life. She wanted to clean up mud-tracks from the kitchen, and read bed-time stories. She wanted to spend all Christmas eve awake, wrapping presents, until her fingers went numb, and maybe catch the imaginary children once or twice trying to sneak down to peek their gifts. She wanted to teach them how to fly a broom. Kiss a skimmed knee. Merlin, she wanted to ground them too, but be quietly proud they had decked Malfoy's kids.

She wanted to pass out on the sofa next to her could-be husband because both were too tired from work. She wanted to argue with him over the silly, pointless things like leaving the milk out, or not making the bed, which she always forgot to do. She wanted to go on trips with them, where everything went wrong, yet, somehow, it was still perfect because they were there_ together._ She wanted to grow old with them, and even though he now had a stooped back and jowls, and she a round middle and a hags tooth, none of it would matter because they loved each other.

She wanted it all.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Now all she had was eight measly fucking months.

It wasn't fair.

Andromeda's wary voice nipped her out her quickly deepening, spiralling thoughts.

"Hemlock, what aren't you telling me?"

_What aren't you telling me, Andy?_

Who was sitting in this seat? Who were you drinking tea with? Who are you hiding? How can she trust anything they said if she knew they were already lying? What could she do _but_ ask anyway? These siblings before her were the only hope of any answer. They were the only two in the world who could possibly know anything.

She was _fucked._

It wasn't like she could question the Portraits at Grimmauld Place.

Walburga only cursed her black and blue.

Hemlock had the dreadful feeling Walburga would laugh in delight at the news of her looming death.

_Bitch. _

Andromeda may be lying to her, perhaps she had been lying a long while now, Hemlock was, perhaps with a touch of paranoia, questioning everything she knew about the woman before her. Every interaction. Every hug. Every smile. Every misplaced joke.

However, Andromeda cared for Hemlock. She _knew_ that. Andromeda cared for her, and Hemlock hoped, really hoped, that would be enough. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. The words felt sticky. Fatty. Sharp like scales.

Hemlock shuffled in her seat.

"The body… The victim… Andy, it was _me." _

It was the first time Hemlock had admitted it verbally. Spoke it into being. It made it horrendously _real. _Andromeda blinked at her rapidly.

"That's… That's not possible. You're sitting right here, having tea and-"

"There was a time turner around my neck. The healer who tested the body said… Eight months. In eight months' time, I die and get sent back to land at my own feet. I…"

_Control. _Breathe. In. Out. Calm. There was no point in getting sentimental or soppy. It would only mean she would be less sharp. Hemlock needed to be quick and sharp if she was going to survive this. Keep to the facts, Andromeda would appreciate that.

"There was a lock of hair found in my fist. It belonged to a Black. The way it was torn out, the amount, well, it seems to be from the perpetrator. The time-turner also appeared to be a Black family heirloom. One I have never seen before. So, either you two have a cousin squirrelled away, or…"

_Or._

What? She wasn't sure.

Hemlock locked gazes with Andromeda. Nothing, in the last four days, had made a lick of sense. Not one thing. Hemlock felt as if she was trying to juggle glass balls she couldn't see, and there, in the dark, they would shatter at her feet and drown her.

_Please, Andy. Help me. Just tell me something. Anything. One little thing. Please-_

Hemlock could see it, a quiver in her cheek, lip pulling back, tongue curling, about to speak-

Narcissus bowed towards Andromeda and whispered something into her ear. Andromeda's mouth shut with a snap. Hemlock sank back into her seat. When he drew back from Andromeda, he stood once more.

"Pardon me, I will be but a moment."

Away he went. Across the room, to the door that lead to the front foyer, the one Hemlock had entered. She watched him go, didn't dare take her eyes from his lithe back, even when she barked at Andromeda.

"Where is he going?"

The older witch spluttered.

"He left a potion brewing on a cauldron, Hemlock. He's merely making sure a fire or explosion doesn't bring the roof down upon our heads while he's away from the lab."

She saw him through the door he left open. She watched him take a left down the hall. A door behind her thumped closed. Her head snapped around so fast her neck twanged. The side door, the one that lead to the conservatory… It was closed. Andromeda was sitting before her. Narcissus was currently making his way down the hall…

Andromeda chuckled warmly and waved it off with a careless flap of her graceful wrist.

"The house elves are cleaning."

Hemlock needed to leave.

_Now. _

Clapping her hands on her knees, Hemlock made sure to keep her smile etched upon her face as she, too, stood.

"I'm sorry about being rude. It's been a long, hard day."

Andromeda was quick to mirror her, edging nearer in a flurry of emerald robes, around the table, grasping her by the shoulders gently. She smiled at Hemlock then. Soft. Small. Achingly real.

It almost made her cry. Why wouldn't she help her when Andromeda knew what was to come?

_I trusted you. _

"No apologies needed. Everything is going to be exactly as it should be, Harry. You'll see."

_Harry. _

Andromeda had called her Harry.

Hemlock had not heard that name in years. Back when she was a little, knobbly kneed girl locked in a cupboard and Dudley used to bully her. With her sawn curls and hand-me-down clothes ten sizes too big, she used to look like a little urchin boy fetched in from the wild. Dudley had loved taunting her about it.

_Harry has no home! Harry has no home! Harry has no home! _

He had been right, in a sick way. The Dursley's had never genuinely been Hemlock's home. Sadly, she didn't think, even though she had Grimmauld Place now, she had ever actually had a home. Houses, roofs to sleep under, momentary shelter, wasn't a home, now, was it?

The closest to a home Hemlock had ever gotten was a fucking boarding school.

That was pitiful.

More wretchedly, the name Harry had stuck all the way until she was eleven, off to Hogwarts, where she could finally introduce herself without Dudley jumping in with a 'Homeless Harry' ditty. Hemlock had _loathed _that name. It was a stark reminder of everything she never had. Everything most people took for granted.

She'd never told anybody about that.

Not even Sirius.

Then how, in the sacred name of Morgana, did Andromeda know that name? And why was she throwing it, now of all times, right back in her face?

"Sorry for my discourtesy. If we may-"

At Narcissus return, Hemlock took a sudden step back from Andromeda, out from under her warm hands, and shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her trousers.

They wouldn't be able to see her wand brace click undone from that angle, with her arms close to her side. Neither would they be able to see the wand fall right into her palm from the extension spell on her pockets. The wood felt like cool courage in her fingers.

_Just in case. _

"I think I have all I need currently. If something more comes up, I'll be sure to pop by."

Andromeda's voice was soft and light, but there, hiding, Hemlock felt something lurking beneath the pleasantry.

"Stay awhile. Why don't-"

"I really must leave. I have a few other people to question. I'll come back this weekend for Teddy."

Andromeda scoured her face with a shrewd eye, from hairline to chin. Whatever she was looking for she must have found it as she nodded sedately, a sad little smile taking root.

"I'll see you out."

Narcissus skulked to his sisters side.

"I'll accompany you both."

Andromeda squinted at Narcissus. He returned the look. For a moment, the barest flash, Hemlock thought the two were having a silent argument, but it was over before it had truly begun.

The stroll back to the foyer door was deadly silent, save for the sound of footsteps pounding on glossed hardwood. Not a word uttered or muttered or mumbled.

Hemlock's grip on her wand threatened to snap the wood in half.

It was Andromeda who opened the front door for her. Hemlock bobbed her goodbye before sloping through. She got a footstep passed the older witch before arms were wrapping around her and tugging her back around.

Hemlock very nearly shot off a stunning spell before she realised she was being embraced. Sluggishly, Hemlock hauled free her empty hand from her pocket, and enveloped it around Andromeda's waist. She hugged back hard.

Harder than, perhaps, she should have.

_I trusted you. _

Hemlock went to pull away.

The arms tightened.

Her wand inched out her pocket.

Warm breath brushed passed her ear.

She barely made out the voice.

"Visit the Black family catacombs in Islington cemetery. 1978."

Andromeda drew away and ushered her out with a wave. Hemlock pocketed her wand and strode through the door. She didn't miss the bitter look Narcissus shot his sister. Snaring her stare, the look fled away in the spring breeze, as he gave a polite bow.

Ever the pureblood.

"I will see you soon, Lady Potter."

And then he promptly slammed the door in her face.

She heard a crack behind the wood.

Someone apparated.

Hemlock dared not let go of her wand until she got to the edge of the gardens, near the ward end, marked by a row of dancing nymph statues.

Why? Because Narcissus had disappeared, and Andromeda had lied to her. She had stated Narcissus had left to check a cauldron. He had taken a _left_ from the tea parlour. The brewing labs in Tonks Manor was in the east wing. Not the west. If he had, in fact, headed towards the potions lab, he should have taken a _right_.

Where had Lord Black gone?

Hemlock craned her neck back, peered at the clear skies above her. She closed her eyes. Breathed in deep. A new day was upon her. A new day closer to her death, and ten steps further back than she was from solving it an hour ago. It was going to be sunny today. Spring in full bloom.

The perfect weather to visit a graveyard in Islington.

It could be a trap, she cautioned herself.

Who was she kidding?

It obviously _was_ a trap.

Her eye peeped open, right on the marbled face of a giggling nymph.

"Don't look at me like that. What choice do I have?"

With a pop, she apparated.

When the air settled from the zap magic, a towering man rolled out from behind the statue, resting against the effigy by his broad shoulder. Eyeing the empty space Hemlock Potter had briefly inhabited, he cracked a toothy, dimpled grin. _She still smelled of elderberries and winter rain. _ With a flick of his wand, a white wisp of coiling smoke danced about him.

"It's started. Get down to Saint Mungo's. She'll be in vault 7."

The shimmering ethereal scorpion, carrying the echo of his rumbling voice, scuttled off into the trimmed grass. Someone tutted behind him.

"How did I know you would be here? I told you to hide. You're supposed to be dead, not peeping on her. As always."

The man chuckled. Deep. Rich. Perversely lofty. He tossed a nimble arm around the shoulders of the man beside him and gave a cheery jostle. Though he gave an exasperated sigh, Narcissus did grin at the age-old act.

"Come on 'Cissus. Where's your taste for danger? I know _our_ Potter has it."

The pair ambled back to the house where, in all likelihood, Andromeda was waiting to hit them both up the side of the head.

"You two have the feel of it enough for_ all_ of us, brother. She's gone to the crypt, you know? Everything's screaming inside her not to go, but off she went. She just can't help herself… Like you couldn't help yourself when you snuck back in to slam that door just to see if she would notice you. She _did_. You have all the subtlety of a rampaging centaur, and you nearly ruined everything."

Belenos Black snickered.

"I did no such thing. I only made her more intrigued. The more dangerous something seems to be, the more likely our Hemlock is to run at it headfirst. What do you think her face will be like when she realizes half the new tombs in the Black mausoleum are empty?"

Narcissus shook his head.

"I imagine it will be very much like her face at father's party, where you nearly drowned that poor Bulstrode in the family fountain for daring to ask for a dance with her. Delightfully pissed."

"That wasn't me, that was _you."_

"Ah,of course it was. However, Hemlock does not know that. I told her it was you."

Belenos came to a staggering halt, even as Narcissus sauntered on.

"Is that why she didn't speak to me for a week, 'Cissus? Was it? Narcissus, answer me."

The only answer Belenos gained was a peel of the blondes laughter, eerily similar to his own.

"You absolute prick. It took me days to get her to stop throwing vases at my head!"

* * *

_Thoughts?_

**Next Chapter: **Hemlock visits a mausoleum and finds a grave that shouldn't be, and Saint Mungo's has a break in, or rather, break _out_…

* * *

Notes: So, did I surprise anyone? I hope so! (but likely didn't lmao)

Here's our first interaction with Narcissus. It was brief and very vague, but I always pictured Narcissa as a reserved, very well-mannered individual, that hides the utter Slytherin underneath. As for the quick glance we get of Belenos (Bellatrix), I always thought they were very much like Sirius, but taking all the wrong choices our favourite Marauder never took. A sort of looking-glass of everything Sirius could have been if he stuck to the pureblood mania.

As for the plot, I know it all seems confusing right now. It's meant to. I really wanted to put my readers in the headspace of Hemlock, who is equally as confused, and I hope that worked out the way it should. I won't promise all the answers will come next chapter, it wouldn't be much of a story then, would it? But, answers and key events do start trickling in.

* * *

**A huge thank you to everyone! **Silent readers, followers, favourite-ers, reviewers, if I could, I would give you all a hug, but I'm afraid my thanks will have to do.

**As always, please drop a review if you have a moment, they keep the muses chattering.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Two**

**The Downside.**

* * *

_Hemlock Potter's P.O.V_

Some said life was a tragedy to those who feel, and a joke to those who think. Hemlock thought that was a bloody awful analogy. Nothing in this world she, most often times despairingly, inhabited was or should be so black and white. Why should it be either or and not both?

Life was an abysmally kismet sized comical calamity.

See? It even had alliteration.

So it must be true.

Life, for Hemlock Potter, was a succession of regrettable incidents that left the poor sod bouncing from one mistake to the next, scrabbling to find ground, until, ultimately, with a tally too full, it laid you in the grave.

There were worse places to end up.

Hemlock Potter should, she supposed, despise graveyards. Her last unwanted visit to one had culminated in the demise of a classmate and the rebirth of on old foe who, like her, wouldn't stay fuckin' dead.

Yet, she didn't.

Not really.

Occasionally, late at night when everything felt so excruciatingly heavy, she thought of those she had lost buried in the dirt. She pictured their memories, all those fleeting moments of life, ticks of joy, and loss, and sorrow, seeping from them, up and out, twisting, curving, hunting for the sunlight.

Roots.

She dreamt of fields upon fields of trees.

It helped.

Gravestones were cool, and hard, and barren. She couldn't stand the idea of those she loved crowned in merciless granite. But trees? A forest of all the wonderful and miserable and grotesque? A place where she could amble amongst their soft shade and, for a brief second, feel as if she was, perhaps, not so achingly alone?

In her dreams, she would rest by the trunk of a great oak. She would speak sometimes. Tell stories and poems and jokes. Rarely, she sang. Most of the time, she was silent, but, she thought, those were the best dreams of all. She swore the song of the forest were voices speaking back.

A crack of a branch underfoot sounded like Sirius's barking laughter.

The rustling of leaves when the wild wide blew echoed like Remus flipping the pages of the books he was so fond of.

The sunbeam breaking through the treetops reminded her of Fred's lopsided grin.

The squawk of a bird nesting above her could very well be Hedwig.

The careless brush of bark as she moved through hummed like Severus Snape's mocking chuckle.

The shadow that darted out from the corner of her eye, under the shrubbery, was Dobby. Free. Untamed. Happy.

In her dreams, she walked in a forest of the dead and believed they weren't really gone. She supposed, contemptuously, it temporarily stopped the guilt. Shame that she had, by her mere existence, put most of them in there. Her little woodland of the dead. In this life, people made their own monsters. Hers, most days than not, wore her own face.

She would never speak of the dreams where she burnt the whole forest down around her, and the crackling of the wood were screams deafening her.

She pretended_ those_ didn't exist.

Hemlock was excellent at pretending.

_Usually._

Not so much this day.

She couldn't, no matter how hard she tried, pretend then, idling at the edge of Islington cemetery, that the fine hairs on the back of her neck were _not _heckled in warning. She had the gloomy sense that this, coming here this day, could be the final mistake that topped her tally to a misstep one to many.

Niume knew Hemlock had used up most of her nine lives and then some.

The Black mausoleum would be, in what the wizarding world commonly referred to, the downside. In brief words, it was basically a cemetery built underneath the cemetery, hidden from the muggles. Sounds simple, right?

_Wrong. _

Nothing was simple when magic was involved.

In reality, it was an inverted switch of time and space, a cemetery formed _over _a cemetery, nastily warded with blood-magic, ancient rites, and hexes long forgotten, to cease any wayward witch or wizard, who had the inclination towards Necromancy, from nabbing dear, departed, dead relatives.

No one wanted to fight their rotting grandmother's carcass revived as an inferi. No one wanted their family blood getting into the hands of a blood-wielder. No one wanted their loving father's head used in primordial ceremonies and summoning's.

Necromancy may be one of the oldest forms of magic, as brutal and vicious as primeval magic had been in the beginning, birthed in a time before Merlin himself, but unlike Alchemy, which was just as old, Necromancy had never had its teeth pulled and lost its cruel bite.

Only the worst of the worst, the very vilest witches and wizards, immersed themselves in Necromancy.

Only so many could survive the toll the ruthless magic took on their crooked bodies and fractured magical cores.

And it was only magical cemeteries, such as the one the Black mausoleum occupied, that drew Necromancers to it like flies on shit.

An endless candy store full of all the wizarding parts, ingredients and cadavers a little Necromancer could ever wish for.

It was why her parents had chosen to be buried in a muggle cemetery. Confident Necromancers wouldn't hunt on such magicless ground.

Hemlock, the Girl-Who-lived, who had been counselled, again _one too many times, _by Shacklebolt himself to stay away from any and all graveyards, because word whispered in the most dubious parts of Knockturn Alley was Necromancers were sniffing her way, for she had shown publicly, not once, but _twice, _she had a penchant for _not _dying, was now here.

Standing, alone, in one of the largest and oldest wizarding burial sites in Britain.

Of course this was a bloody trap.

And of course she was going to walk headfirst into it.

She flicked her wand.

Hemlock's Patronus, a snuffling stag, surged to brilliant, shining life beside her.

The fucker stomped its hooves at her.

Annoyed.

_You and me both, buddy. _

"Kingsley, I'm at Islington's downside. Save your bollocking for when I get back. If I'm not out within the hour and you don't hear from me, well… You know what it means. Wish me luck. I have the feeling I'm going to need it."

Just because she was rushing headlong into a potential ambush, because when _wasn't _it a bloody ambush, didn't mean she had to be foolish enough to do so without informing anyone of her last whereabouts. She may have eight months left until her Death-Day, if everything went to horrid plan, but, well, Necromancers didn't always kill their victims, did they?

They did much worse.

Best someone, _anybody,_ knew where to start looking for her if she was captured.

With one last stiff wave of her wand, the stag evaporated into the air, a wisp of waving light, carrying her message to its intended recipient. The entrance to the downside of Islington was located by the cast iron gates that glistened in the morning sun. A tiny, cockeyed shed that, as with all things wizarding, banally obscured what it truly was.

Slinking to the skewed door, Hemlock straightened her spine, squared her shoulders, and strode in, shutting the door behind her with, unfortunately, a resolute thud. Her hand never left the wooden knobbed handle. A set of runes sliced discreetly into the walnut. The shed was dark, cramped, and reeked of damp.

"Now or never."

Twisting the handle right instead of left, and pressing rather than pulling, the rickety door throbbed before, faintly, a click echoed out and the pulsating stopped, and Hemlock Potter stepped out into the downside.

It was night here.

It was_ always_ night here.

Cold too.

Her breath fogged in a mist around her face.

The crunch of frostbitten grass hissed beneath her dragonhide boot.

From the aged, dilapidated grave closest to her, a twisted knot of carven granite in the shape of the rune for lost love, a crow tilted its head at her curiously from the top, beady eye gleaming underneath the starlight.

There were no angels or cherubs to be found in this graveyard. The wizarding world had no need for Christianity. Most headstones took on the shape of a rune, a favoured part of the buried's life, something they wished to be remembered for, be it love, luck, memory, money.

The vain had a beautiful effigy of their own face etched upon a statue, forever immortalized in marble. Other's chose a sculpted Veela to stand vigil over their crypts. Some, so old, had nothing but a dead patch of land where weed nor wildflower could grow.

The Blacks, not surprisingly, had a grand mausoleum.

A mausoleum that soared pride of place in the heart of the cemetery, looming ominously over those below it. A squat structure of dusky sandstone, infinitely bigger on the inside, of intense lines, lofty columns, sleek glass, and domed head capping. It's sheer severity was not helped by the pale light, cool and crisp, of the bluebell flamed lanterns shielding its iron grated doors, making it appear like a gaping mouth ready to devour those who dared too close to its vicinity.

Hemlock dared.

She dared right on up to its blackened mouth and peered bottomlessly in through the hatch-worked iron.

She dared and all the while called herself a daft bastard.

It was almost like she _had _a death wish.

The iron was icy underneath her hand. Freezing and biting, even through her thick Thestral gloves. The gate moaned heavily as she hoisted it open.

"Lumos."

White light, as wintry as the lamps swinging above her head, lit up her path and slowly, so slowly, Hemlock journeyed in. Step by tentative step.

The wards rinsed over her, breaking like a soft tide on the rocky shore, welcoming her in with a wash of warmth.

Good thing Sirius was her godfather, and Grimmauld Place was currently in her hands, otherwise, with the Blacks prominent use of dark magic in all their warding, Merlin knew what those wards might have done to her if not.

There was only one chamber. Vaulted. So high Hemlock, through the gloom, had no hope of spotting the ceiling, even as she lifted her wand to try and drive the darkness at bay. It clung stubbornly to the top.

_Magic._

She expected no visitors, goddaughter and landholder or not, were meant to see above. The wall holding the tombs, square by square by square, raised with each new generation, pushing the rows of forebearers higher into the darkness, forever away from prying eyes. Eternity lost from living memory. Those forgotten, now engulfed in the night.

No wonder she couldn't see the ceiling.

The Noble Hose of Black was _old. _

Morgana knew how high those tombs reached.

The tombs were uniform in nature. Blockaded fissures of onyx marble flecked in veins of gold. Six-by eight plaques of bronze facing in rows of seven. She could see the bottom five rows before the darkness from above bled down and shrouded the rest.

There was nothing else to the chamber.

Nothing but a large vase in the right corner.

Listless heather, lavender, and sprigs of hemlock brittle in the callous glow of her Lumos.

She didn't know how to feel about seeing the last plant dead as it were.

It hit a bit too close to home.

Whatever Andromeda wanted her to see, wanted her to understand, it must have something to do with the tombs themselves.

_Brilliant. _

Absolutely brilliant.

Hemlock ventured to the tomb closest to the entrance. The last Black to have died and joined his brethren in these darkened depths. She aimed her wand at his plaque. The Lumos rebounded off the engraved name glinting in decadent bronze.

And there he was.

_Belenos Black._

_Should We Lose Each Other In The Shadow Of The Evening Trees,_

_I Will Wait For You._

_And Should I Fall Behind,_

_Wait For Me._

_1951-1978_

Hemlock stalled. Lost. Not only for the very peculiar epitaph stamped under his name, an unnerving sinking in the pit of her stomach at the allusion of trees and death and waiting, particularly given her recent dreams, but because it was _wrong. _

_1978\. _

Belenos Black did not die that year. He died in _1998._ Molly Weasley, in all her beautiful, motherly tenacity, shot him down in a hailstorm of spells when Belenos had pursued Ginny Weasley outside the Great Hall.

Hemlock had _seen_ it.

On swift feet, she shifted along the high wall, the plummeting in her gut growing lower and lower and lower with each new name.

_Alphard Black. _

_All I can Ask Of You Is To Stay. _

_Just Stay._

_1932-1978. _

Another.

_Cygnus Black. _

_I Lost My Way, All The Way To You._

_And In You, I Found All The Way_

_Back To Me._

_1938-1978._

Another.

_Orion Black. _

_You're Not Getting Any Spoilers From Me,_

_Little Crow. _

_1929-1978. _

...Another?

_Walburga Black._

_What He said. _

_You're Nearly There. _

_One more._

_1925-1978. _

Another.

_Regulus Black._

_Mother Lied._

_It's one more over from me. _

_Keep Going._

_1961-1978. _

They were… Were they?… Yes.

_Yes._

They were _talking _to her.

They were fuckin' speaking to her from beyond the grave…

1978\. Every single one of them. The _same_ year, although, from what Hemlock understood of the Black family history, the very small amount Sirius had told her, no Black had died that year. The year Andromeda had given her.

1978.

_One More. _

_Keep Going. _

Anxiously, Hemlock bowed towards the last tomb in the row, at the far edge of the chamber. There was not one thing to be anxious about, she told herself. It was exactly like all the others. Gilded onyx marble. Small little bronze plaque. There was not one thing to be worried about. Not one thing to fear.

There was _everything_ to fear.

It was _her _tomb.

_Hers. _

Her wand almost fell from her hand to clatter and roll across the floor.

_Hemlock Potter. _

_Look Behind You._

_1981-_

No date of death.

Only a warning.

Hemlock whirled around, wand aimed high and true.

The narrow chamber wall behind her lit up. Precisely where her wide gaze landed, a scrawling carving into the wall itself glared back, as if it knew exactly where she would look.

_Not here, you fuckin' idiot!_

Unlike the blocky printed letters of the inscriptions on the tombs, this was carved by hand into the brickwork. Loopy. Pressed together. Hardly intelligible.

Chicken scratch.

Her own handwriting.

Everything fell into place like a horribly morbid jigsaw.

How had she not thought of it before?

_The Time-Turner. _

Hemlock Potter didn't die eight months into the future. Her corpse wasn't sent backwards. It was sent _forwards. _Somehow, someway, she would end up in the past. Perhaps, given this, 1978. Eight months from _there, _she would die in the past, and, perhaps, be sent a few months shy of her own accident that would send her back in the first place.

She was looping her own timeline.

Spiralling in her own history.

She would be there long enough to depart her own messages etched on these very walls.

That changed everything.

It also meant these messages were penned by a her that had already seen and read them herself. Who knew what was coming. Knew exactly what Hemlock would do and say. The her that knew exactly where this Hemlock would _look_, because she had done the same.

Hemlock lowered her wand and there it was.

Another message.

She was right.

_Finally clocked on have you? About bloody time. _

Wow. She was a bit of an obnoxious prick, wasn't she? Yet, if she were to end up in the past, carving these very messages, she would have to whittle exactly what she had read before to ensure that she would find the messages to-

Fuck.

Time travel was headache inducing.

No.

It was best she make sure.

Twirling on the spot until she felt a little dizzy, Hemlock randomly halted and staggered to the closest wall, hand still up, aimed, bright.

Another message.

_Yes, it's really me. You? Us. Now go and check the first crypt again, and stop spinning in a circle like a lunatic. _

Right. Of course. Dandy.

She was speaking to a future her who was in the past, speaking to a past her in the present but currently in the future hers past and-

First crypt. Yes.

Skulking back to Belenos Black's grave, crouching to get a good, hard look, Hemlock found nothing wrong, discounting the epitaph and date of death. Clean, cool, clear. Not a cobweb in sight. She gently brushed her hand over the surface, thumbing across the name, finding nothing more. There was nothing more!

She slapped the slab in frustration, as she stood again.

The sound echoed.

Echoed.

Hollow.

No…

Hemlock, half dazed, scuttled back and took aim.

"Bombarda!"

The marble cracked and caved in on itself, a plume of dust floating into the air. Sprinting back, she waved the dust away, shakily yanking out chunks and hunks of marble from the tiny boxed compartment.

Nothing.

Empty.

Belenos's crypt was vacant. Void. Fucking bare!

Not even a hair or a tatty piece of clothe!

Frantically, her eye veered to the next. Alphard Black.

"Bombarda!"

More rushing. More confusion. More frenzied desperation.

_Empty. _

"No, no, no, no, no…"

Cygnus.

"Bombarda!"

Smoke, rubble and nothingness.

_Empty. _

Desperation didn't even begin to fill half of what Hemlock Potter was feeling in that moment. These were, arguably, some of the darkest witches and wizards to live in recent times. Belenos Black had tortured Alice and Frank Longbottom to madness. He had tried to do the same to Hemlock's best friend, Hermione. Cygnus and Orion had been Tom Riddle's right-hand men in his first climb to power. Shit, some argued that without the backing of the Black family, Tom would, and could, never have gotten halfway to where he had.

And their crypts were empty.

Never filled by the looks of it.

Their bodies _gone_.

Orion.

"Bombarda!"

Empt-

Not empty.

A crumpled piece of parchment.

Old. Ragged. Stained in the corner by either, hopefully, coffee, or very old blood.

Unsteadily, She unfolded it.

Her handwriting, anew, scowled back at her, bracketed by drops of please-let-it-be-coffee.

_They've breached the Black wards. Don't fight. You won't win. Just run. Look behind you now! Don't just stand there! Duck! NOW! _

Hemlock dropped down to the ground just as a flash of repugnant green barely missed skimming the curls on her head. There was only one spell with a shade so sickening.

The killing curse.

Twisting on her knees, Hemlock flung a stunner behind her, but it was too late. The crack of apparition snapped in the silent night like a whip through air. They were smart. They knew they would only get one chance at a jump. All she saw before the stunner burst on the wall behind them was a shadowed silhouette.

Gone.

Stooped, bent on the ruined floor, heart thrashing in her chest, ringing in her ears, Hemlock glanced down to her braced hand. She would never know why she did, what made her look down, but, till her dying day, she would be thankful to whatever cosmic force had made her do so.

There it was again, her writing, scribbled between her splayed fingers on the tiles of the marbled floor. Just one word.

_Run. _

Hemlock did just that. Bolting from her squat to a dead run. Out the mausoleum, through the graveyard, leaping over headstones and flowers. She peeked behind her. Nothing seemed to be following but-

_There. _

A crack of apparition.

Not too far off.

The killing curse shot at her shoulder she scarcely managed to zag to the right in time to miss it. The crow on the gravestone she had passed coming in was gone.

_Fuck. _

Stupid, foolish, girl!

It was an Animagus.

The next Avada Kedavra grazed her ear, shrieking and spitting and whistling, as she plunged into the crooked shed. She rammed back instantly, barring the now closed door with her body, out of breath. She twisted the handle just as a battering thud recoiled at her back, threatening to throw her off the door.

Someone was trying to break in.

Someone was trying to get to her.

_Kill her. _

The door thrummed with magic.

It burst open.

Hemlock Potter fell on her arse back into the morning. Raising her wand, she took aim at the opened door. She held her breath. She waited. Waited some more. Waited to be sure. Nothing came tumbling out the shed after her.

Letting out a lengthy, drawn out sigh of relief, she slumped on the ground, her wand falling limply to her side.

What the fuck was that?

_Who _the fuck was that?

By the old gods, she felt as if she was fourteen years old again. Running for her life through bloody graveyards. Confused and scared and alo-

She _wasn't _that child anymore.

She would _never _be that child again.

At least now she knew, had first-hand experience, that someone, unquestionably, _was _trying to murder her. She also knew, somehow, the Blacks centred in this outrageous mess. Their graves were empty. That meant… Something. Something that, certainly, tied into her being sent back into the past sometime soon. What she didn't know, however, and truly critically, was how the fuck that all knotted together.

Hemlock rose from the ground with a huff, and winced.

"Ow, shit… Oh, no…"

Her ankle… Her ankle _hurt. _She must have landed on it funny when she went tumbling out the door.

No.

It was just a sprain.

It _was. _

It _wasn't _broken. It couldn't be. Really. She was changing things. She had to be. See? She could walk on it just fine and everything was going to be-

She took a step forward and her ankle gave out, forcing her to skip and stagger to stay upright.

It was broken.

Out from a nearby bush, a frolicking otter came sailing towards her, bringing Hermione's whispering voice along with it.

"Hemlock, we need you down at Saint Mungo's. There's been a break in. It's your… The body… You're gone."

The shimmering otter faded.

Hermione must have sent the Patronus before Hemlock had braved the downside for it to find her so quickly. It could have been loitering out here for a while, waiting for Hemlock to come back out. Patronus's didn't work in the downside. The warding didn't let them.

Motherfucker.

This was a _diversion. _

Hemlock was busy in the downside, running for her life, too focused on surviving the Black mausoleum to not look back and see her own corpse being pilfered out the mortuary of Saint Mungo's.

She'd been played.

And who had set her on the false trail?

Andromeda-fucking-Tonks.

Hemlock Potter was going to skin the witch.

* * *

_Thoughts?_

**Next Chapter: **Frantic, furious, and hurt, Hemlock Potter learns her memories might not be all they seem to be, and time-travel, like magic, is never simple…

* * *

**Notes: **I got asked whether we are going to see anybody else's P.O.V in this fic and the answer is yes, to anybody else who is curious. However, we won't see another characters P.O.V for a short while yet, about three chapters I believe, but it is coming.

* * *

I hoped you enjoyed this! **Thank you** all for the follows and favourites, and the lovely reviews, be sure to leave one if you have the time, and I will hopefully see you all soon.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Three: **

**Poor Girl.**

* * *

_Alphard Black's P.O.V_

_February 12__th__, 1978. _

Cripps Cove laid grey-green under the overcast sky, the sprawling bluffs of Cornwall an overhanging fence against the choppy sea. The Irish wolfhounds, three in total, snuffled at the sparse undergrowth cresting out between laths of rock and pitch and watery winds.

Alphard Black hummed in the chill sea breeze, voice lost in the whistling gust, far from home and far from worries that came swift and hard in these trying times. As a middle child of three, he was a man of quiet measures. Quiet measures that buried the snake skulking beneath, unlike his brothers who were_ all_ serpentine.

You reaped more with honey, his father had once told him as a boy, than with vinegar.

A lesson that had, evidently, gone flying straight over his brother's heads.

Orion, his eldest brother and current Head of House, was a year out from his fiftieth birthday, even If he did not appear a day above his thirties. Intense would be the polite term for his charm. A feverish man filled with impassioned opinions and leaping hearts would be the unkindly sense. If Orion believed something, if he wanted something, he would put his all into it, every scrap and feel, no matter how or who he had to snatch it from. He loved with everything he had, every breath and beat and blink, and, likewise, he _hated _with it too.

It was a good attribute for the Head of the House, the Black family had certainly prospered for his all-or-nothing approach, but for a brother?

It was infuriating.

Especially when he and Orion hardly saw eye to eye these days.

Cygnus, the youngest of the trinity at forty, was… Unpredictable. Stubborn, tenacious, and ambitiously excitable, Cygnus changed with the storm and kept his cards close to his chest. The only definitive that held true with his younger brother was, in all ways, Cygnus would do what you least expected, and some fucking way, come out on top smelling of roses.

And then there was him. Alphard Black, middle child, no wife, no heir, no landed home. Some days, he thought he fell between the two, prudent enough to withhold as Cygnus, but with the unwavering tenacity of Orion. A calm depth and strength, just as the waters of this Cove were. Always thinking, always planning, always _cunning. _Perhaps that was why he, out of all his family, was the Unspeakable.

On other days, he wished he was bloody adopted.

Such as today, as he heard the unmistakable crack of apparition from behind him, promptly pursued by Orion's deep, biting voice. Alphard could already feel the headache thrumming at his temple like a too tight violin string, threatening to bloom into a migraine.

"You should have told me."

A grave, lengthy sigh, full of semi-suffering. Alphard kept his gaze to the shifting sea.

"There's many things I should have told you, Orion. You will have to be more specific."

It was too late, clearly. Orion was worked up, stomping across twisted stone smothered in slippery moss to loom at his side, bearing down, already in no mood for Alphard's vagueness.

For a Slytherin, his dear brother surely lacked nuance and finesse.

Father was surely spinning his grave.

A grave, in Alphard's opinion, that took to long to fill.

"Did you really think I would not find out?"

Ah, so this was the root of his irritation? Orion had finally put two and two together, had he? Given, Alphard thought this day was a long time coming. The missed diners, the extended time between visits, the hasty departures at arbitrary hours. This confrontation should have happened weeks ago.

Naturally, Orion would be dismayed Alphard was an Unspeakable. Orion, in all his passion and prudence, accepted nothing but complete devotion to the family name. To him, the Black's came first and foremost, and anything less was intolerable. However, as an Unspeakable, family name, blood status, and dogma meant _nothing. _The good of wizarding kind was their sole duty, their lone focus, their only commitment.

You can see the problem, yes?

Perhaps, in some sick way, that was what Alphard enjoyed best out of this whole mess. Maybe that was why he took the job a few months back to begin with, Merlin knew he didn't need the money, just to see that scowling, dark gaze scrunching at Orion's eye, threatening to pop a blood vessel in his twitching cheek.

The urge to get underneath people's skin was brazen enough to include his brothers, and this, Alphard thought, learning the danger his brother was in daily, would assuredly ruffle Orion's feathers. As vindictive and vicious as his brother could be, no one, not even a Pettigrew, could or would dispute Orion's love and care for his family.

Though his youngest son, Sirius, was beginning to push how far that love could go.

The boy was too much like Alphard, Orion would grumble over a tumbler of Firewhisky, always looking for a revolution or riot to spark.

"The view of the sea is lovely from here."

The scowl positively scorched the side of Alphard's slack, peaceful face.

"Do not play with me, Alfie. Not today. You should have _told _me. Do you really think I would have rejected it?"

_Yes._ Yes he would have, on a myriad of rickety reasons, if only to keep his family safe. Alphard couldn't live that way, swathed in a cotton Charm. He never had, and he never would, and if Orion sincerely believed Sirius was like him, in any form, he would loosen the crippling grip he had on the boy, or risk losing him as their father had lost Alphard. By Albion, Alphard had only gained his last name, Black, back after the old bastard's demise, and Orion had taken over the House, restoring his brother on the family tree.

"We both know you would have. And, I suppose, I could not even if I had wanted to. It _is_ in the name, dear brother."

Orion scoffed.

"I am puzzled on how or when this began, yes, and, of course, Cygnus is exasperated, given Belenos's… _Involvement_, particularly after how hard he has pushed for that betrothal between his eldest son and the Lestrange girl. However, Triads are strong magic. She has a very old name. Perhaps as old as our own. Cygnus will come to see that and-"

Alphard only heard his nephews name, the rest fading to a glassy blur, gaze snapping to meet Orion's so fast his neck twanged.

"Belenos is an Unspeakable?"

That… Didn't sit well in Alphard's gut. Unspeakables walked where no wizard dared. His nephew was only twenty-seven. Too young to be doing what an Unspeakable did. What in Nimue was he thinking? He had his whole life ahead of him, and-

Orion frowned at him and blinked.

Blinked some more.

Blinked again.

"No. Not that I know of, but then, none of us would know, would we? If he was and-"

It came crashing upon Orion like a tidal wave.

"_You're_ an Unspeakable?"

Now it was Alphard's turn to become cautiously perplexed.

"I believe we are both having very different conversations right now."

Orion shook his head, his dark hair skimming his shoulders.

"Alfie, no games. I do not-"

"Wait, Triad? Did you say Triad? What Triad are you talking about?"

Triads were old magic. _Tricky _magic. Bondings made of three or more. Only, if the magical cores of the individuals were not _perfectly _aligned in power, light and dark spectrum, and magnitude, well…

Pop goes the weasel, as the old nursery rhyme went.

They were rare these days, most purebloods settling for a ghost of the original ritual that mitigated the dangers, hardly anything more than a Muggle marriage with an unbreakable vow, further lowering the risk by only bonding one to one.

Nevertheless, in time long past, they had been the foundation of their civilization, magic thrived only when connected, to wand or feeling or another witch or wizard, and though they were often called Triads for ease, it was not always _just_ three.

In some records concealed in the bowels of the Ministry, it was six Morgana had to be bound to for the size of her magical core. Merlin unified with nine wives…

Poor bastard.

"Alfie, I saw the lineage Tree. I _know._ You cannot talk your way out of this one._" _

Alphard chuckled.

"Well, it is good at least one of us knows what is being talked about, because I certainly _don't_."

Coming to the end of his notoriously short fuse, Orion conjured bridles for the dogs with a flick of his wrist, wrapped securely around his fist, and, hastily, grabbed onto his brother's shoulder. The snap and pop of side-along apparition was engulfed by the clatter of waves crashing on rock.

They emerged in the green parlour of Grimmauld place, Orion's home, with barely the feeblest rinse of nausea. Immediately, Orion let the wolfhounds go, hearing the pitter and click of nails on marble as they dashed out the room to sniff and snort into the gardens out back. His brother detached and sauntered to the wall opposing them, steadfastly pointing to the ornate rolling tree painted and carved across wall.

"Then would you care to explain this change I saw this morning?"

Alphard followed his finger…

And practically swallowed his own tongue.

The Lineage Tree was winding, twisting and tall, detailing all Black marriages, births and deaths in a sheath of leaf and bark. It was not the first time Alphard had seen the tree, he had grown up being forced to memorize each branch and blossom and bud. He doubted this would be the last time he saw it, either. However, it certainly was the first time he saw it _moving. _

Below the portrait of Cygnus rested those of his three children. Belenos, Andromeda and Narcissus. It was the former that caught his attention. The branch hanging Belenos Black's scrawled name and painting was moving, stretching upwards, over and around to his uncle's, Alphard's, name, piercing and linking, dropping down.

Between them was a new branch, an orange blossom in bloom, dangling a sweet portrait of an alabaster girl with an explosion of fiery curls and eyes the colour of an unforgivable. Her name glowed in the dim light of the room.

_Hemlock Potter._

_1981-_

Married. Alphard Black was… Bonded… And so was his nephew… To a… To a _Potter_ of all things… A Potter not born yet… and-

It shifted again, languid like a bubbling brook.

"If I need to explain this, then surely, Orion, you need to explain _that."_

Alphard gestured to the wall, and Orion swivelled, searching, before he too saw what was happening.

The branch holding him and his wife, Walburga, withered to charred black, a broken bond sifting to ash. Walburga barely held onto the tree, tacked on merely by the branches still linking her from her two sons. Yet, what was most interesting was, low and behold, another branch forming, weaving through Orion's picture, draping right around to the orange blossom girl.

Another flutter, a rustling of leaves, another section perishing, this time Cygnus's, dissolving from his wife in a wave of scorched earth and linking to the strong new branch. One More, sinking out from beneath Narcissus, weaving, knitting, a loop around the new branch. Five new branches, all with one centre.

_The Potter. _

The Tree stopped moving, though both brothers gaped at it for a long while. When Alphard regained control over his tongue once more, he fell back into the only comfort he could find.

Sarcasm.

"Congratulations on your new bonding, I would have brought a gift if I knew-"

"Shut up, Alfie! What in Merlin's name is going on? Why… How…"

Alphard crept up to him.

"The tree is sentient magic. Time does not mean much to magic. It looks like, sometime soon, we are all to be wed. Merlin help the poor girl."

And wasn't that a hex to the gonads?

Sobering, and painful.

Bonded…

He was bloody bonded…

So were his brothers, and his nephews and-

Six was a powerful number in magic, potent and-

To the tree, the family magic that spun in the paint, this bonding was… Pure. Absolute enough to supersede over any previous bonds. Strong enough to shatter them. Orion eyed the wall as if it could, at any given moment, devour him.

"Perhaps we should inform Cygnus of this… Change."

Alphard smirked and clapped him on the back.

"This is going to be delightful. You know how much he hates his current… Last? His last wife. Can you imagine how well he's going to take to this?"

Orion scowled at him.

"You're taking this all so very well for a man who risked disinheritance from father because of his refusal to wed a Goyle."

Alphard chuckled, though he felt no hilarity crest in his chest.

"I've always had a thing for redheads. Then again, if I remember your dalliances in Hogwarts clearly, which we both know I _do_, so did you, dear brother."

There was a slender flush to his cheeks, a blister of pink, before Orion huffed and tugged on the hem of his waist coat, muttering as he marched from the room in a flurry of fine robe.

"I'll floo call Cygnus and get him and his boys here. Together, we'll… Figure out this madness. Despite your joviality, we all know what _this _means. We need to prepare."

He was gone, carried away in blush, uncertainty, and a flair of fury. Alphard's smirk sank as soon as Orion was out of sight, feeling no need to keep up any pretense of composure now that he wasn't being watched so keenly.

Shit.

Magic, as most witches and wizards knew, was alive in some form, though scholars disagreed over how far. One thing no one argued about was, being alive as it were, left it with remnants of sentiency. Sentiency that saw magic as a magnetic force, pulling, attempting to be whole.

That was rather difficult when every witch and wizard housed a fractured core of magic. A tiny shard all their own. That was why bonding's were originally so popular, it was seen as fulfilling magic's will to reunite and become complete. It was no more evident than in family magic, the force that protected a families ancestral home, linked brothers and daughters, fathers and uncles, protected its bloodline in dire times, and so much more purebloods took for granted and muggleborns didn't have.

The Lineage Tree was merely a physical manifestation of that unseen clan magic Alphard's ancestors had conjured millennia ago. It could work on it's own, sometimes, rarely, but it _could. _

As it had done just now.

_Six. _

A bonding of six.

In Arithmancy, six was the number for love, family, home life, and protection. Purebloods carved it upon the cribs of their newborns. Wives painted it on the soles of their feet on their weddings. Fathers gave their children gifts of sweets on the sixth of every month.

For some bloody reason, someway, the Black family magic had bound them to this orange blossom girl. Completely ignoring time and space and everything in between, as magic itself sat outside of. It had acted on it's own will, and that… Alphard could only think of one trigger to cause his family magic to go to such lengths, as Orion must fear too.

The total destruction of his House.

His _family. _

Gone.

No more Blacks.

Not even Regulus and Sirius, the children…

And the only one who could fix it, his family magic determined?

A Potter.

A not-born-Potter.

By the looks of it, the Potter's couldn't be doing much better if their own familial magic had permitted this to pass.

Alphard inched up to the tree, stroked his thumb across the portrait. The family magic purred back.

"Merlin help the poor girl, indeed."

* * *

_Hemlock Potter's P.O.V_

_August 25th, 2001._

Every act of perception is, to some decree, an act of creation, and every act of memory is, to some extent, an action of fantasy. Memory then, was, mostly, an internal event to fill in the blanks.

That was the first rule you learned as a Legilimency Master, and the first rule to be an Unspeakable was, of course, to _be_ a Master in Legilimency. Ultimately, It all came tumbling down to one very straightforward, very pure, _very_ complex rule of law.

You couldn't trust memories.

Not entirely.

Not ever.

Don't believe them from a suspect.

Don't have confidence in them from a victim.

Don't trust them from a witness.

And don't, whatever you do, not once, not fully, not always, take them at face value.

Predisposition tinged memories like paint on a canvas. Flaking. Dense. Opaque. Past experiences bled into the present, toning and matching it. A victim of burglary would always look wearily upon those who next entered their shop. Bias, as air, was everywhere. None more so than in a seemingly innocuous memory.

Of course, memories where useful, especially in Hemlock's line of work. Though you could never take a memory at face value, you could still learn a lot about a witch or wizard from a pensive.

The old woman who scowled and hustled past the youth was simply twice shy from the assault and mugging she suffered three years prior. She was not mean, or cruel, or aggressive as first believed by the innocent teenager she elbowed past.

The memories of an overbearing mother disregarded the fact of the eldest brother's death five days before a child's birth. She did not genuinely care about the child's grades, or how well he did in his piano lessons, or was too pompous and conceited to let him play with the other children as her fellow school parents gossiped.

The little girl dressed in yellow because it was the last colour she saw her beloved grandfather in before he died of dragon pox. It was not simply to break school rules and kick up a fuss, as her teacher's moaned about, or her own favourite colour as her mother explained, or even a phase, as her aunts and uncles would console. She, that little girl, would wear yellow for the rest of her life, despite her loathing the hue.

It was all in perception, and everybody knew perception was idiosyncratic.

What nobody ever told you though, was never, not fully, not once, not always, trust your _own _memories.

Arrogance in ones own mind, the belief that one's thoughts were infallible, impartial, unprejudiced, _clean, _was a natural tendency. As beings who spent all of their lives insular, inwardly thinking, it was hard, nearly impossible, to conceive of a notion where that system, those thoughts, those memories you recollected so fucking clearly, the one thing you spent doing every waking, sleeping, breathing moment, could, perhaps,_ be_ imperfect.

Unthinkable.

See?

There it was again.

The absolute trust one put in one's own memories. If you can't think of it, it must not be true, and on the flip side, if you could envisage it, then, contrary wise, it must be real.

How could you possibly have gotten it all so horribly wrong if you had been there yourself?

Seen it with your own eyes?

Felt and thought and sensed it all?

Hemlock thought, really thought, the precise moment you realized memories and thoughts were flawed was the exact moment people went mad. When they realised even their mind, their precious, precious mind, with all those memories and thoughts and feelings, was nothing but a passing shadow, a mimicry of the moment that, fleetingly, always passed with a tick of a clock.

If so, perhaps then, it would be safe to say, standing, again on the outskirts of the morgue of Saint Mongos, puzzling over the disappearance of her corpse, Hemlock went a little crazy.

Why?

Because nothing, since her own bloody corpse had landed at her dainty feet, made a lick of sense. Her cadaver getting up and seemingly walking out on it's own two feet was just the tip of the fuckin' dragon's hoard. The wards, rare, rumoured to be from the time of Merlin himself, could have only been broken in from the _inside_. The best kind of wards for a morgue, a rational person would argue. No one, least of all Hemlock, expected a stiff to wander off on its merry way.

No one could figure out how it happened.

The only possible solution was if, somehow, her body had gotten off that slab itself, broken the wards which were only fragile from her side of the door, and trotted off.

But she was dead.

_Dead. _

They had cast every spell on that corpse, preformed a bloody autopsy, put it in cold stasis, which, if alive, would have killed any witch or wizard within seconds from the suffocating charms, and deadbolted the fuckin' temporary crypt it was stored in. Even if, Nimue knew how, that body had been alive when it was levitated into the morgue, it was sure as fuck dead _now. _

Or should be.

It _should _be, but there was spell damage _within _the crypt from where the thing was blasted open from the _inside_, and with no Healer present in the morgue at the time, the wards could only be collapsed from, yes, the _interior_. It didn't make sense, but, so far, Hemlock hadn't completely lost it.

Close, but no dice.

That came when Hermione Granger strolled down the snaking hall flanked by Ron and Bill Weasley. Hemlock wanted Hermione, her seven-month pregnant friend, nowhere near the place.

"What is she doing here?"

Hemlock barked as the trio came ambling to her side. Hermione, glowing and healthy and _alive,_ beamed at her.

"I'm your best hope at figuring this out. No one has better scores in Arithmancy and Warding as I do in my Mastery. And, if you recall, I was the one who messaged you and-"

Muscle jumping in her jaw, Hemlock swerved on Ron.

"Ron, take your wife home. Take her home and ward your house. Ward it _strong._"

There was a moment there, a glint of his gaze as Ron darted a look between a furious Hemlock and a bewildered Hermione, where he looked a little afraid.

Afraid of _her._

Like one would be afraid of a dog foaming at the mouth.

"Mate, you're not making any sense. It's fine, and-"

_Her_ not making any sense? Merlin, Hermione was _pregnant. _Heavily pregnant with their first child. Her magic wouldn't be up to scratch, and _this_ is where Ron brought her?

"Go home. Both of you. Do you not understand the danger you're in?"

Hermione's smile trembled in the corner, straining to stay on her face as she took a cautious step forward, doing that little head bow thing that one did to approach a pissed off hippogriff. Slow and steady and utterly maddening. Why where they acting as if she was the one who had lost their mind?

They shouldn't be here.

Anywhere but here.

Near _her._

Near-

"Danger? Hemlock, _really_, calm down. Nothings going to get me in a morgue. I'm perfectly capable of-"

Hemlock's ire came like steam, boiling up from the engine of her gut, torching her throat and reddening her face. The tips of her ears burned, as much as her tongue felt keen and cutting.

"I told you the Black crypts were empty. I _told_ you! Belenos Black's tomb is fuckin' _empty_. What part of that isn't setting in?"

Hermione dithered as Ron, Hemlock's best friend, fingered his wand strapped to his hip, warily watching, as Bill pulled in at the back, ready and waiting. Hemlock caught the movement immediately, but that wasn't what hurt her. What hurt her was Hermione, who appeared divergent then. As if her brain and body wanted two separate things, and neither could act in accordance, hopping from one swollen foot to the other. Hug or run? Run or hug?

"Well, yes, I understand that. Belenos was an expert in the dark arts. But, if it as you say and he could possibly be alive, through necromancy or other means, I doubt he would come calling at the Burrow when-"

Hemlock cut over Hermione's platitudes with fierce zeal.

"Of course he would. You're the one that got away, Hermione! You need to go home. Pack. Go on vacation. Leave the country-"

Hermione's hands came down on her shoulders, soft but tight, _scared_. Anew, contradictory, caught between wanting to pull Hemlock in close, or shaking her about and rattling her head until her teeth shook themselves loose.

She settled for a quiver.

"'Lock, calm down. I _don't_ understand."

Hemlock batted her hands away, stomach roiling. Something felt…

_Wrong. _

Something was _wrong._

Dreadfully _wrong_.

She-

_Breeze in the trees. Green sunshine on the forest floor. A man's laughter echoing between bark and branch. A hand in hers, warm fingers. An orange blossom in her palm. A turn. A dance. Grey eyes peaking through locks of onyx hair and the smell of treacle tart-_

Hemlock violently shook her head.

"I don't understand how you of all people seem so nonplussed that Belenos could be alive!"

Hermione stumbled back as if Hemlock had struck her physically across the face with a sound slap.

"What do you mean _me_ of _all _people? Sure, I saw him in the battle of Hogwarts, but Molly snatched me away as he ran to the-"

_An orange blossom in her hair, perched behind her ear, fiddling with fragile petal. The smell of campfire clinging to clothes. Moonlight overhead, streaking the ground silver, as silver as the eyes in front of her, as fireflies buzzed about their heads like winged halos. A smile. Aching. Large, toothy, dimpled in stubble. This was-_

Hemlock hurled her glasses off her face, the metal and glass clinking and shattering on the stone. She didn't care, as she reached up and scrubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hand, scrubbed that confusing image away.

Something was terribly wrong and-

"You saw him closer than that! You saw him closer than any of us and-"

_Silk on skin. Closed bed curtains of velvet, so thick they tinted the air emerald. She could see the dust in the air, gliding in the beam of sunshine breaking through the crack in the curtains. She held her hand up, touched the warm light, the ring on her finger gleaming. It was calm here. Calm and safe and so far from all the-_

_Clove smoke drifting. A hint of sweet aniseed. He, beside her, laughed as he always did. Full bellied and-_

Hands urgently yanked hers from her face, Bill's worried gaze wide. When had he gotten so close? When had-

Her fingers felt sticky and wet and warm.

Blood.

She was scratching at her eyes.

Clawing.

"Hermione, stop. I think Hemlock's under a-"

Hermione didn't listen, as Hemlock didn't. Both as bad as each other when they began arguing.

"Hemlock, you are making no sense whatsoever, and I really think you should sit and-"

_A flash of red in the night. A frantic heartbeat pounding in her ear. Copper stinging in nostrils. Dobby crouching at her side, simpering but brave. So brave-_

_Bleeding._

_No._

_Not now. _

_Not here. _

_It was meant to be safe. Safe and quiet and peaceful and-_

"He tortured you! He tortured you in Malfoy manor!"

"_Run!" _

_She did. She ran. She ran, and ran, and ran, and ran until she couldn't anymore, until she couldn't breathe without fire in her lungs, until she collapsed to her knees, until she heard waves crashing on sand. He was heavy in her arms. Heavy and dead. _

_Dobby's head lolled in her elbow, and-_

"Hermione, stop! Ron, get your wife back now and-"

"I… I've never been to Malfoy Manor, Hemlock…"

"_I'll find you! I promise, I'll find you." _

Hemlock wrestled with Bill, jerking her hands free, stumbling back. She couldn't breathe. Something thick and stiff draping around her chest. Constricting. Coiling. Danger.

Everything was wrong.

"What do you mean you've never been? Of course you have! We all have! We got captured by the Snatchers, and taken to Malfoy manor and-"

Hermione's voice dropped low, a whisper, twisted like tree roots, or Hemlock couldn't hear her over the pounding in her skull.

Her head was going to burst.

Pop like a balloon.

"We got split by Snatchers yes… But _never_ captured… Hemlock, please, sit and-"

_Can't remember. That's the rule. You can't remember. They can't know. Not yet. Forget. Forget. __Forget._

Ron had his wand out, aimed, ready, as Bill tried to hustle her to the window seat behind them. He had no hope. She was a seeker in nature, slippery and swift and slick.

"I heard you screaming! They forced me to listen to you in the cellar! Voldemort nearly got us! Belenos carved Mudblood into your arm-"

Hermione sounded as if she was sobbing, moaning. Just as she had been in that ballroom, begging Belenos to stop, pleading with everything she had. It wasn't the sword from his vault, she had promised, as the knife raised-

_That's right. The cellar. You were in the cellar, not the silk bed, or the sandy beach, or that pretty little woodland. You were dirty and hungry and listening to your friend being tortured. Forget the rest and remember the cellar. Remember the smell of rot and mould. Hear the cries and-_

"Hemlock, I don't know what you think happened, but we were split and-"

_Forget. _

Hemlock dipped past Bill's hulking frame, too quick for Ron's spell, as she snatched Hermione's arm. With a tear, the sleeve of her blouse was ripped, flapping, open and-

Bare skin.

Bare, clean skin.

_Remember? _

_No. _

_Forget!_

"Where is it? Where's the scar? He… He… The knife… He carved it into your arm and you never wear it open and-… what did you do to it? Did you heal it? What…"

Tenderly, perhaps gentler than Hemlock deserved right then, as fevered and frantic as she was, Hermione held up her hand to stop Ron firing off another spell, softly peeling Hemlock's bruising finger's from her pale wrist. She didn't let go of her hand.

It was the only thing holding Hemlock to the ground.

"Hemlock… I told you. I've never been to Malfoy manor and we were never captured by Snatchers."

Time was a lot like water, Hemlock found. A drop, a frozen lake, a rushing river. Right then, it was more like a waterfall, a spray of feeling beating her like butterfly wings. Disjointed and incoherent. The birdsong outside the window of the hallway was loud, almost deafening in the ensuing silence. The chill from the open morgue felt icier on her skin, pricking.

"I don't understand… I was there… I was_ there _and I _remember_ and…"

Bill, finally, managed to get a hold of her, looping an arm around her shoulders, sturdy. Leading her away.

She let him.

Shock.

She was in shock, Hemlock thought, disengaged.

"Get a Healer. I think Hemlock is suffering from the False Memory Charm."

* * *

_Three Hours Later…_

The starched sheets rustled beneath her legs as Hemlock sat on the edge of the cot, looking up to the ceiling as the Medi-witch dabbed essence of dittany on the skinny scratches around her right eye. She couldn't bring herself to look at those in her cubical, Ron, Hermione and Bill, so she focused on the tiles above their heads.

Dab, dab, blink, blink.

"I don't understand… I was gone for eight weeks?"

Hermione sighed, breaking away from the curtain sectioning them off from the other patients in the Memory ward, coming to a rest at the end of her bed. She dared not come any closer, and Hemlock felt bile lap at the back of her mouth.

"Everything up to the Snatchers happened exactly as you remember, but we _never_ got captured."

Sensing the need for privacy, the Medi-witch dropped her soiled cloth into a little bowl, and with a waning smile, flittered away. Still, Hemlock stared at the tiles above. One was chipped in the corner, a little black hole, broken and jagged. Her gaze shot away.

It didn't go back.

"We got split up in the woods. We lost sight of you and you… You disappeared. I… We were so worried. We… We panicked. We came back to the Order. Back to shell cottage. Everybody searched for you but they couldn't find you. Our only hope was Voldemort hadn't come out into the open, as he would have if you died."

Ron picked up where Hermione left off.

"Then, one day, you came back. You appeared on the beach, carrying Dobby's… You came back, sobbing, and we… There was so much blood and… We thought you got captured and tortured and-… We tried to talk to you, but every time you got dazed and… Pomphrey told us in cases of severe torture or trauma, a victim might mentally block it. Forcing remembrance could be damaging. The only thing we could do was sit and wait for you to talk to us."

And Bill, gruff towering Bill, hammered the final nail into the coffin.

"But you never did and we never thought… Then you went on a rampage, demanding you three go to Belenos's vault. Merlin knows where you got that idea, but you were right and… Well, everything else you remember seems to be exactly as it should be."

A tap of her tongue on teeth in a beat of six.

"I wasn't tortured though, was I?"

Bill waited for the orderly to roam on past before he answered.

"No, I don't believe so. You appeared with no signs of torture, not even a whiff of a Crucio, which always sat funny with me. In fact, you'd gained weight. You looked healthy, underneath Dobby's bloo-… It seems you were placed under a heavy, modified False Memory Charm. You said you heard a voice? Telling you to forget as you saw… Flashes, just now? Did you recognize the voice? It could be the person who charmed you."

Hemlock sagged as she shook her head.

"So, where the hell was I and what was I doing for eight bloody weeks? More importantly, _who_ was I with for two months during a bloody war? And who the fuck gave me the hint about Belenos's vault?"

_Who helped her win the war?_

_Who took her memories?_

_Who killed her in eight months' time?_

_Who took her body?_

_Who led her to an empty crypt filled with necromancers? _

_Silver eyes as pale as moonlight-_

A Black. It had to be. This began with a Black, and it ended with a Black.

"Is there a way to get my memories back? My real memories?"

Bill gave her a smile, melancholic and shrivelled like withered sunflowers, and everything Hemlock hated.

"It's strong magic. _Really _strong. I can't make heads or tails of it, and as a curse breaker, I've seen many memory spells. This makes the one that was placed on Hermione's parents look like a first years homework, and it took me eleven months to detangle that one. I don't think it will ever be fully reversed, but you might be able to push through if you try hard enough. The cover of torture of a close friend leads me to suspect whoever puts this on you didn't want you pushing at the memory, picking it apart. It could mean it would be less likely you would want to… Focus on that memory, delve in any deeper than you had to. It will be a long process. Painful too, I think."

There was only one possible person who could have done this to her.

A Black who was an Unspeakable.

As one herself, she was regularly tested with the best spells and charms to detect memory alteration. Old magic not easily circumvented, unless you knew what to dodge, and the only way to know what to dodge would be to be an Unspeakable yourself.

The records of listed Unspeakables were normally locked under blood wards and the nastiest hexes. No one could peek… _Normally_. Hemlock had viewed them three years ago, to make sure no Death Eaters had been working for the Ministry as an Unspeakable at the end of the war.

There had been only one Black name in the ancient lodger.

Just one.

Which so happened to be belonging to an empty Crypt in the Black mausoleum.

"Hemlock, where are you-"

The crack of apparition shattered through Hermione's voice.

Alphard Black had stolen her memories, stolen them like Tom had stolen her soul and childhood, and she was going find him.

And then she was going to kill the bastard.

He wouldn't cheat death twice.

* * *

_**Thoughts?**_

**Next Chapter: **Draco Malfoy was having a pleasant, if dull, tea at Tonks manor with his father and aunt when a bedraggled, bleeding and infuriated Hemlock Potter came smashing into the dining room, assaulted his father, and demanded to know where his twenty-years dead relative, Alphard Black was. It pretty much spiralled from there...

* * *

**THANK YOU **for all the wonderful reviews. Thank you for the follows and favourites too, and I really do hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and are looking forward to what is to come. If you have a spare moment, please drop a review, and I will see you guys soon!


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